Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows scenes of overcrowded inner-city streets and houses in Melbourne in 1949 and contrasts this with images of newly built spacious suburban homes and gardens. To an upbeat orchestral soundtrack a narrator first introduces a family living in congested inner-city housing then cuts to a young engaged couple expressing their concerns about where they are going to live after they marry. Aerial views emphasise the lack of open space before the solution is proposed in scenes showing a Housing Commission suburban development under construction.

Educational value points

• In 1938 the Victorian Government formed the Housing Commission of Victoria in response to a report that identified slum housing as a major problem in inner-city Melbourne, where the private rental market failed to meet the needs of low-income earners. Slum housing, a problem aggravated by the Great Depression (1929–32), was largely caused by landlords charging high rents for their poorly maintained properties. This resulted in tenants overcrowding properties.

• The shortage of housing, illustrated by Mary and Ted’s dilemma, was due to the decline in housing construction during the Great Depression, which brought the building industry to a standstill. This situation was aggravated by the Second World War (1939–45), which halted existing civil construction as resources were diverted to the war effort. The national housing shortage grew from 120,000 dwellings needed before the War to 300,000 dwellings by 1945.

• The housing shortage was in part due to an increase in marriages postponed during the Second World War and to Australia’s immigration program. These increased the population by 39 per cent or by almost 3 million people in the first 15 years after the War. In 1949–50 the post-War immigration program added 300,000 to the number seeking housing. Victoria’s post-War population growth was the largest in Australia; a 41 per cent increase between 1946 and 1950.

• This film was a government-sponsored public relations exercise made to counter negative publicity. While campaigns by slum reformers from the 1930s to the 1960s used photographs, films and newspaper features to highlight the poor conditions in the inner-city slums, A Home of their Own was the Victorian Government’s response, which attempted to show the public that the Commission not only recognised the problem but was actively responding to it.

• The script and music in this clip combine to present a positive and optimistic view of the problem and its solution. While the narration admits to the problem of the housing shortage it also describes ‘how the state of Victoria faced up to the problem’, how 15,000 new homes had been built in Victoria in the last year. The fast-paced cheerful music contributes to this mood, even though some of the footage shows the dilapidated housing of the inner-city suburbs.

• A deliberate contrast is made between the open space of the new suburb and the cramped inner-city houses – usually terraced, consisting of two bedrooms and a lean-to kitchen with an outside tap and toilet as well as an outside trough but no hot water, internal bathroom or laundry. The clip emphasises the lack of space, both inside the kitchen and in the backyards. By contrast the new suburb has sunny gardens for the adults and playgrounds for the children.

• The supply of new housing of the type depicted in the clip was insufficient to address the demand, and high-rise accommodation was soon being built. In 1960, several large areas of inner Melbourne were declared 'so substandard in nature that economic repair was out of the question’ (Dalton, Tibbits, in Howe (ed), New Houses for Old, Ministry of Housing and Construction Victoria, 1988), so the Housing Commission of Victoria responded by building 45 high-rise blocks between 1962 and 1974.

• The Victorian Housing Act (1937) and the Slum Reclamation and Housing Act (1938) required the Victorian Housing Commission to improve existing housing conditions, to determine the minimum standards for new houses, to reclaim unsanitary areas, to provide houses for people of limited means and to divide municipal districts into residential and other areas. Between 1945 and 1960 the Commission built 47,000 dwellings on 231 estates.